New World Order: The Watchman Rises
by Sudonim
Summary: Walter Kovacks, once Rorschach, awakes to a world he doesn't recognize...or remember. He isn't the man he used to be, but has he really changed? And what sort of future lies before a man who shouldn't be alive?
1. Chapter 1

_Always thought death would be quieter. Not so loud, at least. Too much noise to be dead, unless afterlife suddenly real. After so many years bullshitting, strange time for God to decide to be real, let alone Heavenly Host and rest of Biblical drivel._

_Always assumed death would be less painful, too. Not act; dying always wretched and filthy. Just…BEING dead, less painful, not painful at all. Can't decide if this is bad or not. If dead, then at least still feel, so not dead by default, and what? _

_If not dead, then what…?_

He feels cold, so cold around the edges, but his core is warm.

_Kind of warm feels wet. Warm like melted butter, mushy and runny, no other words for it. Rancid-warm._

There is no taint to his skin. Instead, he feels fresh, clean-scrubbed, pink at the ears and nose and-

_Naked, no clothes, cold around the edges-_

"I presume you are awake now, yes?"

_Who-? Who is that? Voice…so familiar…_

"Now-now, my dear Walter, pretending to be napping is only keeping me in such horrible suspence."

_Ozymandius! Adrian! Worthless sewage-swilling-swine! Damn-…_

…_Still naked…_

He sits up with such rapidness that the stars filling his field of vision outnumber the greatest astral displays of his childhood, the summer he finally ran away and rode the rails to the wide-open fields of Schenectady. He flails at his face, trying to cradle his head with his arms, but his dizziness is spread to all the outlying stations of his nervous system; his feeble back gives out as soon as the brace his elbows provided disappears.

Adrian barely saves his fall.

"Oh-ho-ho, Walter, I won't have you giving yourself a cerebral hemorrhage…At least, not before I know whether my machinations were…_successful_."

_Adrian's hands. Cradling head like Doomsday button, probably read to crush, thinks I've information I'll spill? Sick __**and**__ deluded. _

"G…go to…_hell_…Vv-vv-veidt."

Adrian gingerly places Walter's head back against the infirmary pillow before clapping his hands slowly but with relish, applauding himself before an empty room, his only audience the infirm man on the table.

_Still too weak, exposed in more ways than one-_

"Welcome back, Mr. Kovacs, and let me say, looking quite as fit as ever."

_Have to find way to sit. Or talk. One or other good, both better. Hope Captain Monologue won't notice not paying attention…_

"You know, I had my doubts, what when I first saw the…_state_…you were in. I dare say a man of less integrity might have shuddered at the sight, but we both know I've never been one to pass up a challenge."

_Have to…move…__**somehow**__…_

His fingers inch along cold metal, his flesh sticking as he begs his muscles to comprehend the gravity of their situation: They might _think_ they could do whatever they pleased, but if they let him down now, they might go straight back to Hell with the rest of him. Apparently, Hell exists after all, seeing as he must have been there if Ozymandius had found something to bring back-

Something hard, foreign, boxy and metallic interrupts the normal curvature of his left side, something static and unyielding against his flesh. His roaming index and ring fingers inch along its breadth, tracing the fused line between man and machine, his mind drawing the parallel line between the intrusion and the base of his spine.

_Some sort of maintenance, catheter maybe? Not bomb, please don't be bomb. Ozymandius cruel, maybe insane, definitely not retarded…_

Instinctually his body tries to pull away from the phantom trap, its true intent currently lost to Walter, but he assumes the worst, just to be on the safe side.

Startled by pain, he lets out a clear yelp of distress, pain shooting wildly across the spiderweb of his nervous system, its epicenter the strange intruder on his side.

"Dear me, Walter, but it seems I forgot to detach you…"

Ozymandius breaks his self-important tirade, the quick clip of his boots against ironwork grating stopping directly to Walter's right, and he feels Adrian's body heat fall across him as the man leans over him; he appears as a dark blur, obscuring the institutional fluorescents.

_Smell, that smell…Smelled before, often, mostly recent, like dreaming but awake, maybe dead. Yes, probably dead. Was here, though, somehow._

A series of cheerful chimes sound over the intercom, and a muffled woman's voice give some sort of computerized update as a pressurized hiss fills the room. An instant later, a great weight seems to be lifted off Walter's entire body: He feels light, anticipating effortless movement, faster than he knows how to comprehend.

He sits up directly into Adrian's chest, knocking the caped man back, only-

_-Only he's in civilian garb, a lab coat and black slacks, disheveled, unkempt, unlike himself. Dark circles; must not be sleeping recently. Cat-antelope-thing dead, maybe guilty conscience? Certainly not over billions he tried to kill, certainly not Dr. Manhattan-_

Hissing, Walter clutches his head again: His brain doesn't want to think that route right now, apparently, because his head might explode if he does.

Across the room, Adrian laughs almost imperceptibly.

"What're you so pleased about?" Walter grumbles, rubbing the sides of his face as the headache dissipates, and he begins to get his bearings: The room is huge, with open bulkheads to left and right set between arching walls that appear to be glass, but looking through them proves they need to be something much more durable. "Are we…under water?"

"You've always been the perceptive one, Walter," Adrian smiles, turning his attention to a nearby wire rack full of bundled clothes. Selecting one from the center shelf, he unties the carefully-folded assemblage before setting it primly at Walter's side.

_Privacy? Huge empty room, just the two of us, he could go be busy somewhere._

Really, the room is quite packed with similar stations to his own: A table more appropriate for dissection than patient care ringed by piles of tubing, life support machines, and unidentifiable million-dollar gadgets that look straight out of a science fiction tabloid. In the center of the room stands a massive circular work station, like a nurses' hub without the nurses or patients or hospital. This is where Adrian's attention is diverted as he speaks, a long row of flasks and test tubes set up in an order only particular to his current work.

"Aren't you wondering where you are?" Adrian asks, busying himself with pouring and measuring and annotating. "Aren't you going to ask me some delightfully cliché questions about how you got here and what's going on? Because, let me assure you, Walter, I've already told you."

"…What?" Walter asks, a bit stunned. He's pulling on the blue scrubs, one-leg-and-then-the-other-just-like-that-don't-fall-down, and Adrian's line of talk is both baffling and annoyingly distracting. "You-"

"I've been telling you every day for the past 6 months, Walter," Adrian interrupts, rounding on him with what Walter can only call _homicidal_ fervor. He stops just short of stepping on Walter's toes, Walter retreating only a step backward before his waist contacts the metal death-bed and he's forced to lean his upper body back, nearly reeling. Adrian's hushed words barely reach him in the expanse as he continues: "I've been telling you each day, ever since we began…I hummed it to your first cells, constructed your tissues to its tune, whispered it into your newly-formed ears, Walter, Walter-Walter-Walter, I _made_ you, don't you see? _**I made you**_."

"You-…" Walter repeats, dumbfounded. Sure, his voice is hoarse and his muscles are unused, his mind is clouded and he feels completely at odds with himself, but he wasn't dead, hadn't been, had he? Not rebuilt, that's insane, impossible, incredible. Besides, why would it be _necessary_? It wasn't like Dr. Manhattan or –

Crippling waves of pain, his head screaming as his mouth tries to follow suit, but it's enough to take his breath away. Adrian steps back as Walter doubles over, gasping as the gears in his head grind to a hault.

_What's happening??!? Can't…remember…_

_Night Owl and…Jupiter…nuclear war, Ruskies threatening Nixon, the whole __**world**__, and Ozymandius does too…__**Doctor, what did you do? To ME?!**_

"Doctor…Man_hattan_-" Walter wheezes, groping at his thoughts while the dark ring of unconsciousness closes around his field of vision. He feels he needs to know, and Adrian will have to tell him, or he'll force him to tell him, anyway, because his brain won't think it, for some reason. "What…what did…what _happened_?"

He feels light, like the moment Adrian disconnected him, and just as he gets the idea he's soaring through clouds, the solidity and frigidity of the metal table bring him back to reality. Adrian has picked him up under the arms, sitting him down on the edge, holding him steady. They are so close that Walter can once more smell the clean-smell coming off Adrian's tired body.

Adrian places his hands on either side of Walter's head and pulls him close, his temple touching Adrian's chest. Awkward, uncomfortable thoughts surge past the blockade surrounding the Doctor, overriding one concern with another, and he's caught in the backwash of confusion.

"Oh, Walter…Don't think poorly of him, Walter," Adrian soothes, ignoring the tension and discomfort radiating off his subject. "He did what he felt he had to do, nothing more, nothing less, as is Dr. Manhattan's way, I suppose. But…if I may, he was a bit reckless, foolish even. Foolish, but well-intentioned."

"Stop talking circles," Walter grunts, pulling away finally, peering up into Adrian's shifting eyes. He may have seemed tired, but there is no fatigue betrayed by his eyes, so perhaps it is his body playing games.

"He killed you."

Water is dripping into a half-filled bucket, tinging hollowly in the vast expanse, a ticking echo that fills the void of silence between the two men, one stoic and the other slack-jawed.

"He…_killed me_?"

"Yes. Is that so hard to believe?"

"But…_Why_…Yes, I don't believe it, I can't! I can't…don't…_want_ to-" He mumbles into silence again, looking at his lap to avoid Adrian's eyes.

_Everything's changed, then? Dr. Manhattan kills me. Would never happen, not in a MILLION years, but then what other explanation is there? And why-…?_

"I do feel…_different_," Walter says to himself, touching his side where the metal box used to be. Now there is only a sort of plug, like an empty outlet, and he doesn't dwell there any longer than he did the thought of his supposed last moments. Both pains are physical and psychological, but neither is moreso yet than the other. He doesn't really feel like dealing with either.

His face is turned upward, Adrian's palms soft and warms against his cheek, his jaw, his neck. Warm lips greet his own, daring to nuzzle closer for the slightest taste, a gentle nibble, and then Adrian pulls away, a gentle smile on his face.

"As you should," Adrian whispers, "_My love_."


	2. Chapter 2

_Adrian's Journal  
10__th__ January, 1986_

_So much to do, and so little time…The last of the land-locked generators has been dismantled, much to the chagrin of my investors, and I daresay I won't hold it against them if their fickle funding runs dry. Last week that lecherous bombast in Washington signed the final treaties with Russia, signifying an end to our coldest of wars, his pen stroke a razor in my life's work's jugular._

_It isn't that I didn't see this coming; I anticipated every move and gesture of every player from beginning through summation without error, and though I knew this act to be inevitable, I still cannot forgive the stubborn stupidity of these plebeians, these ill-begotten philosophs playing War in their sand castles._

_My work is __**brilliance**__, and yet they refuse to see it, blinded by their midnight terrors and waking visions of a glowing blue Satan._

_A Satan I begot, lest I should quickly forget it._

He can barely raise his head, let alone manipulate the round green peg Adrian placed in his hand after Walter's clumsy hands fumbled it to the floor for the uncountable-nth-time this session. The task is simple enough, and its purpose even more basic: Learn to grasp and utilize objects effectively, using proper force and pressure in the fingers, hands, etcetera, and then apply this logic and modality throughout the organism to encourage viability of the structure.

In other words, learn how to walk.

Like a baby.

Walter Kovacs is no baby.

His eyes slowly travel the length of his arm from the elbow to the wrist, the blush of dark purple near the joint a reminder of the blood samples Adrian took regularly in order to monitor his iron and potassium levels, among other things. His blood was not clotting properly, Adrian kept explaining, but the veiled expression Adrian wore when he peered through the dark red vial, holding it between his eye and the ultraviolet overhead lights, hinted of something far more complicated and concerning.

_15__th__ January, 1986_

_Nixon is dead._

Walter slowly rotates his wrist, his fingers spreading as his hand turns to face the glass ceiling, and the peg rolls gently from the heel to the front of his palm. He tries to focus on its weight, remembering the shape and texture of similar objects, their use and operation, and methodically works his way around the foreign invader before attempting to assail it once again on the peg-board in his lap.

_2__nd__ February, 1986_

_The media screams for blood while the people bathe in it: They say it was Red Baron, or Drake, or possibly both of them in coercion, Soviet masks who've long voiced their disdain for Nixon, for America, for our continued domestic struggles. They have called for anarchy and death before, and now that it is upon them, they flee like the cowards I always knew them to be._

_It won't be long before the people have their way. If mankind can be trusted to do anything, it is to act without honor or humanity in the face of morality._

He closes his hand slowly yet surely in a heavy fist, the wooden cylinder like the hilt of so many knives he's wielded before, and with what he prays is the same passion and dedication that he once gave to that most sinister of crafts, he plunges the harmless shank-

-directly into the top of his knee.

_14__th__ June, 1986_

_Daniel called. I can't say I understand his motivation, but perhaps it can best be defined as bullheaded sentimentality; he's marrying the lovely Ms. Jupiter, their love-rich blastocyst already embedded in her womb, a bomb as deadly and inevitable as its name implies. He spoke at length of his rejuvenated endeavors into the Crime Stoppers, detailing the numerous applicants and the minutes of their first meeting, and I admit it was a hardship for me to entertain such talk from a man 7 months from hanging up his mask altogether: He may be an idealist, but Daniel knows a child cannot be raised in the care of masked parents, not without severe psychological and mortal repercussions._

_I shudder to think what might have become of any child in our service when Moloch was at his worst._

Adrian does not complain when Walter drops things or muddles his demands between untrained lips, when he loses his composure and throws fits or loses his will and slumps, like a dead and deboned fish, across whatever task he's been set about. He knows this is simply part of the work, that Walter will take time, that it is his job to mold and remake him, now that he's granted Walter life anew.

_August, 1987_

_Their representative, Omar, came to visit today, and I am sorry to say that he was not what I expected: Long dusty and dirt-stained robes, a red-checked turban, a heavy accent, and a distinct and pungent odor far harder to interpret than his words. He represents men of incredible wealth, power and integrity, and yet he presents himself in such a manner?_

_Either he is very coy, or blindingly stupid. Needless to say, our dealings went awry, and so another representative will be sent along shortly, or so I imagine he said likely somewhere amidst his driveling babble. It may do well to read up on Pashto, or perhaps Farsi in general._

Walter does not protest or comprehend why Adrian moves him into the padded containment block in the sub-cellar beneath what he's come to know as the Observation Floor (his glass-domed universe, as it were). He doesn't resist or react when Adrian tugs his shirt up over his head and tosses it, neatly folded, across the back of a chair Walter assumes he's to be using. As it were, he's standing propped against Adrian's shoulder, and though he barely hears the whining hiss of pressurized, frozen air, he feels a symphony of sensation prickle across his skin, across his _mind,_ as he's hooked up to what must be a voltmeter via his side port ("anterior input" as Adrian insists it be called).

He stands straight for the first time since waking, nearly a week ago, and focuses on the joy of uninhibited breathing, tasting the very air that hums with life and jostles him with its intoxicating presence. Everything is so…_vibrant_-

A hissing static of discomfort washes across his back: Little needles, a dozen, two dozen, maybe four-score all pricking his outermost layer of skin, some kind of acupuncture probably. Adrian, a man renowned for his metaphoric arias in praise of science, now the epitome of hypocrisy as he falls back on homeopathic remedies?

_Winter, 1991_

_I've taken my studies into private quarters._

_What might have once been seen as the ultimate answer to Man's suffering, the key to unlocking the mysteries of death, is now outlawed on land, in my own country, in my own __**home**__. This shrinking from science is too much: The list of insults grows too long, and I cannot abide the company of my fellow man any longer, as he clutches his Bible in one hand and his genitals in the other, hoping that God or The Resident Shrubbery in Washington will find a way to provide him both salvation and an easy paycheck without the hassle of hardship._

_There are pipelines now in the deserts and the highlands and deep forests where animals should roam, flowers should flourish, where photosynthesis should rejuvenate the world while the world gives itself back to our Mother in the most perfect of symbiotic relationships, feeding and re-feeding alike. There are trenches and barbed wire in fields where the great breadbasket of the world, our most fertile of moons, once lay green with verve, now blood-caked and stained with the excrement of Man, and we turn to scientists and ask for cures for impossible things, things that cannot be cured because the virus is the one seeking it, and its answer lies within itself._

_Man, Man is the problem here…Yet I seek to save him? I __**should**__ have saved him, too, if not for these interfering Nero's in their burning palaces. Where I see the Fountain of Eternity, he sees only the Fountain of Youth._

The dull hum of electricity in the air becomes a low, pulsing throb. Gentle waves of energy lap across his muscles, his heart pumping faster as his blood surges, his tissues oxygenate, his reborn body truly coming back to life.

"How do you feel so far?"

Walter looks at him fully, smelling and tasting and feeling and _sensing_ the very presence of the man at the controls, the wide panel of knobs and buttons unchecked on his first and highly ineffective sweep of the room. He's so much _more_ than he was but a minute ago, and it all seems so impossible, he can't find words with which to articulate his awe.

He is _alive_.

_Some Time, 1995?_

_So long, so long alone, down here, beneath the crushing ceiling of the world. To think the weight of this water is so much greater than the air I once roamed through, yet I feel freer to be myself under its threatening oppression._

_The technicians have all gone. The last Deep Blue waits in the airlock at the end of the queue, a lame puppy waiting to be put down as the rest of its litter-mates are swept away to unknown ends._

_I can't leave._

_Can't._

_Even if I wanted to, the work here is too great. My plans are so close to fruition. I look up from my writing and there before me lies the proverbial apple, Pandora, Prometheus, awaiting my careful hand to guide him back from Eternity. The Fountain is close at hand now, and I shudder in anticipation and fear: To become like God, or to become God, by obtaining his greatest gift, is a far greater dream than any I have dreamt until now, and yet it has blossomed before me like a Bakawali bloom, so sudden and short-lived that I hasten just to think of it._

Something is wrong.

His heart flutters, twitches, and then begins to pound with such fierce and rapid strokes that he thinks he might faint. The world becomes red-and-black, astrals and lens bursts in a hell-wrought nightmare-scape, the room twisting out of proportion and reality. And the _pain-_

Searing bursts of agony roll up and down his back, as if great hands are tearing away fistfuls of flesh. He curls and coils and flails, slapping at needles and lashing at their spider-like cords, terrified and desperate to break free. The more he struggles, though, the more electric fire wraps around his body. 'Seizing' is not violent or horrid enough a term to describe the wild dance he carries out, the floor a knife in each sole, his own skin a knife in each hand, the expansion of his ribcage while he breathes so exquisitely excruciating he fears his bones will shatter.

Adrian's hands move imperceptibly on the controls, his gaze cool and unaffected as the bizarre scene unfolds before him.

_1__st__ July, 1995_

_He Is Awake._

Electricity shrieks and whines as cables snap and tear from ports that were never meant to detach. Monitors pop and flash, the control panel emits a burst of acrid smoke, and the pleasant computer-woman's voice intones a mellow warning over the intercom.

Walter can't hear her over the sound of his own scream as it curdles over his lips, a sound buried deep in the darkest confines of his soul, an infant's plaintive cry for the entire world to pay heed: I Am Alive, I Am Born, I Am Here!

Lunging forward, Walter's ties are severed, and he staggers under the gravity of his own form, knees bent, arms hanging limply toward the floor as his hunched shoulders and drooping head follow the curve of his back. Only the heavy, animal sound of his breathing fills the room.

Adrian gets to his feet but hesitates, quashing his impulse to rush to Walter's side: He has to grow up, find his own feet, even if he _is_ Adrian's creation, even though he must make this last push on his own.

_8__th__ July, 1995_

_He is so perfectly flawed, his eyes the same humid green, his banal Irish features as unyielding as I recall, but gone is the acidic insanity, the clawing phobias and consuming mania. He is more Walter now, I think, then he was during his whole natural life, but he lacks that fire Rorschach carried in his breast, that __**drive**__, and I fear that may be his mortal weakness._

_But how do you convince a man to live, once life is given to him?_

"Adrian," Walter growls, his genius blood shock-frozen to paralyzed sludge as those same piercing green eyes gaze up at him through the curled fiery fringe of his hair, "The next time…you need to _torture_ someone…m-make sure…they aren't get-ting…_up _again."

_Simple:  
Show him what it feels like…to __**FEEL**__._


End file.
